David Christien Jacques

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The

Who Jumped Bail

L ITCIEN CONEIN’S reported efc|
fort to establish an assassination i
program at the Drug Enforcements
Administration was apparently frus-
trated before it could be tried out.
But this program was perhaps oniy
the most direct tactic designed for
use in the drug war and the tempo-
rary setback did not deter him front,
pursuing other equaliy unconvenii
tional undertakings. One of the first
and largest of these was the anoma-
lous series of secret operations in'
South Florida code-named Deacon i.

Deacon 1 was a response to DE.^'s'
discovery that the main drug traf-
fickers in Southern Florida — par-
ticularly in cocaine — were Cuban
exiles. This was a new challenge, for ,
many of these opponents had beea,^
professionally trained in exfUtration •
and infiltration during the CIA'S;
five-year secret war against Cuba ia
the early 1960s. The DEA found it-
■telf helpless against such e.xpert-,
enced professionals. What really
alarmed the drug agency was the^
discovery that some of these former'
CIA men were putting their ol«t
counterintelligence training to worlr^
against them. “We found that if w^
were following someone; someone
was following us,” explained a DEA;
official in Mi ami. "The Cubans wer«
actually counter-surveUllng us. They
were just beating the pants off us.”

The obvious solution to the prob-
lem was for DEA to hire its own Cu-.
ban exiles; hence Deacon 1, staffed
exclusively by former CIA men. Dear
con 1 was to be a prototype of the
kind of CIA-Far East operation that
Conein planned to initia te through-
out the world. Three full-time DEA
officials — ail with CIA backgrounds
— were assigned to direct a net of
about 30 highly experienced Cubans^
FkOBi the begiiming, the program
wai jcept secret, even, from moat
t^!f]dfhdals in Conein’s dlvistp& m

ran it personaily but of his office m
Washington, passing orders through
a Cuban veteran of the CIA wba
shuttled back and forth to Miami.

The drug world that narcotics off!
dais are called upon to control deals,
in huge sums, of money and is char-
acterized by a total lack of scruples
about corrupting or kitling anyone
who gets in the way of the traffick-
ers. It is no wonder that government
narcotics officials so often turn for
assistance to figures as loathsome as
the trade itself.

-An argument can be made that no
other kind of person can safely or
effectively operate in such an envi-
ronment But just as a man is af-
fected by the company he keeps, so
too are ^ug officials and their pro- ;
grams twisted by the informants
they employ. The story of Carlos
Hernandez Rumbaut, one of Deacon"
I's informants, shows how far just
one such alliance can go.

L ike most of the Cubans in Dea-*
con 1, Carlos Hernandez had
been at the Bay of Pigs. Apparently
he first came to the attention of the '
old Bureau of Narcotics and Danger-
ous Drugs (BNDD) when he was ar-
rested in Mobile in 1969 with '467
pounds of marijuana which he said
he was going to sell in Miami His
trial, scheduled for April, 1971, ■wad
postponed when the judge deter-
mined that his mental state was dis-
turbed.

With this curriculum vitae the
BNDD regional office at Miami saw
fit the following month to enlist him
as a “Class 1 cooperating individual'*
He provided some useful inform*-
tion; in return, the bureau not onij|
paid him 1190 but attempted to bK
tatcede on his behalf with the AlaJ
buna autiioritles. Unmoved, thn

jailed him pentOng a new< tnai.^
BNDD was thus forced to put Her-
nandez on an “Inactive cooperating
individual status.”

I '

He was then convicted and sent-
enced to 19 years. Not even this
cooled the Miami office’s ardor for
Hernandez. He appealed but didn’t
have enough money to post his $2!I-
000 bond. Deacon I’s chief agent and
Conein’s right-hand man on the pro-
ject solved the problem by arrang-
ing for one of Deacon I's informants,
a CIA veteran and a successful Cu-
ban jeweler in Miami, to lend Her-
nandez 912,300. He assured the jew-
eler that DEA was in effect gua-
ranteeing the loan. As soon as Her-
nandez was released from jail the,
Miami office put him back on active
status.

At this point Hernandez had had-
enough of U.S. justice and fled t»’
Costa Rica, where the government,
accorded his drug experience a very j
different recognition. Within weelsi
he was made an honorary member;,
of the Costa Rican Narcotics Divl^'
Sion, then promoted to captain and;
second in command by order of thea^
President Jose Figueres. Soon after;;
he became ^gueres’ bodyguard.

Ail of this information comes fron^
Hernandez’ confidential DEA fll^
which includes CIA reports on Her-»
nandez’ conduct as a Costa Ricai^
narcotics officer. One of these iden^
tifies him and a relative of President|
Fl^eres as members of a death:
squad that executed at least one nar-.,
cotics trafficker in early 1973 and
had sworn to kill more (a solution toj
the drug problem eerily reminiscent'
of the reported assassination
gram proposed by Conein for ;
co)..

Hernandez imMinsHp* cfiaci a
weKW

yAAmlwiMdnr Vka^l

to lily. 1973; ttotoEHBM
dbcottttove hi ntotioMhiii whk' toi

infoRuat Bat JtorBUi4eriiraiiM>»4

for all practical purposes, the Costa:'
Ricaa narcotics divisioa and th^
DEA, loath to give up so strategicall^q
placed an asset, disregarded the am^
bassador’s. directive. In October J
1973, the Alabama courts denie
Hernandez' appeaL

H ernandez had no tntentj
of returning to the Unhatf
State* to go to jaiL Even so, the man
ter might simply have faded aipatf
were it not for the understandabic
anger of the Deacon 1 informant
who had guaranteed half of HeriUDK
des* bail. The jeweler, unwilling to
forfeit his $12,500, demanded thah
Hernandez make good his loss, aiMi|
threatened to track him to Coatol
Ricaif he didn't. ( ; q

Hernandez, meanwhile, was stil^
working with DEA, now in conjunc’.
tion with its regional office in Mex-^
ico City. He told the drug agency,
that the American government wai)
’treacherous" and he threatened to :
"eliminate" anyone who attempted
to come after him. The embassy in
Costa Rica became understandably -
nervous and asked DEA to resolve-
the dispute quietly. A special agent
was dispatched to San Jose to sooth*.
Hernandez. In a conciliatory
Hernandez at least agreed not to
harm any American narcotics offt>'
cial.

The DEA’s machinations to pror^
tect Hernandez were now forced toi
widen. DEA's New Orleans regional
director was sent to persuade the at-4
tomey general of Alabama and th«>*
district attorney in Mobile to wahre^
the appeal bond forfeiture. But th^
director's efforts angered the loca^*
prosecutor. Bandy Butler, who nog^
only refused to cooperate but mad*'
Hernandez an issue in his campaign,'
and threatened to tell the world if.
DEA made any further attempt to.
keep him out of jaiL ,

And so in late 1973 Carlos Heman>*
det — Bay of Pigs veteran, convicted’
drug smuggler, DEA informant,’
Costa Rican narcotics ace, private ’
executioner and presidential body-^
guard — was preparing to become.,
an international incident, ready to ,
go off right in the middle of to*^
post-Watergate furor, the montoBti
tlM Jeweler set foot in Cost* Ricaci^^i£

tm' w>. way^ to appeal ta^i^
Coptit Rk^ goroniment for Mlpb
HMte was an etecUon coming nphs^

Hanandei' pesitto in the coontiyTti
sarcotiGS divtoot was so strong thal^

no one felt he could be dislodged, -

Something bad to be done quickly
Conein's supwvisor, George BMitf

decided to pay the jeweler $12,5(X> h*i

dramadcaily increasing his montWjf
/•««h payments a* sn informant ovea^
thenextyear.

• B would appear to have been
dangerous risk for Belk to autbac)M4
the payments, since they Indirectiyi
amlsted a fugitive from a drug cs ssj t
But Belk, when contacted, said thersfi
was nothing wrong with this. “Her-
nandez was a source at U»e tlma.'*J
But he “didn’t work for me, he waa^
working for the Costa Ricans. The^
guy who was working for us, wha|
had provided the bond money, was ,
the crux of the problem." 5

Meanwhile, one senior DEA off!-*
cial reports that Hernandez has'
twice ance entered the United
States, the proud bearer of an Amer-.^
ican diidomatic passport

. —GEORGE CHILE m.;